Hickock and Smith: Beyond IN COLD BLOOD

20Dec

Perry Smith (Top) and Dick Hickock

Perry Smith and Dick Hickok murdered the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas back in the 1950s. This gruesome killing of four innocent people, fueled by the duo’s belief that Mr. Clutter had a safe filled with money in his home (not true), rocked the citizens of Holcomb and indeed the nation. The story of the brutal murders caught the attention of Truman Capote who brilliantly rendered the story in his landmark book IN COLD BLOOD.

The killers were convicted and executed in a Kansas prison in 1965.

Flash forward to 2012. Investigators in Sarasota County, Florida believe that this dynamic duo might also have murdered the Walker family in 1959. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest this but the proof will come through DNA. Maybe.

Christine Walker was apparently raped before she was murdered and samples obtained from her have yielded DNA. This profile has been matched against several suspects but none have panned out. Now the police have exhumed the bodies of Hickock and Smith and taken bone fragments for DNA testing.

I have been doing quite a bit a research on the Clutter and Walker murders and two things need to be pointed out: Hickock and Smith were executed in 1965 (not 1963), and there is NOT much linking them to the Walker murders except that they were in Florida at the time of the murders. It was widely believed at the time of the Walker murders that Christine Walker knew her killer. Hickock and Smith passed the polygraph exam and the fingerprint collected at the scene did not match either of them. I am by no means a champion of Hickock or Smith but I would hope more “evidence” would be required before we decide to hang them a second time.

I agree that it is unknown whether they were involved or not, and indeed it is likely they were not, but it is an intriguing idea. And yes, it was 1965 that these two were executed. Thanks for pointing out my typo. It’s been corrected.